Configuring IP SLAs FTP Operations

Last Updated: March 22, 2011

This module describes how to configure an IP Service Level Agreements (SLAs) File Transfer Protocol (FTP) operation to measure the response time between a Cisco device and a FTP server to retrieve a file. The IP SLAs FTP operation supports an FTP GET request only. This module also demonstrates how the results of the FTP operation can be displayed and analyzed to determine the capacity of your network. The FTP operation can be used also for troubleshooting FTP server performance.

Finding Feature Information

Your software release may not support all the features documented in this module. For the latest feature information and caveats, see the release notes for your platform and software release. To find information about the features documented in this module, and to see a list of the releases in which each feature is supported, see the Feature Information Table at the end of this document.

Use Cisco Feature Navigator to find information about platform support and Cisco software image support. To access Cisco Feature Navigator, go to http://www.cisco.com/go/cfn. An account on Cisco.com is not required.

Restrictions for IP SLAs FTP Operations

The IP SLAs FTP operation only supports FTP GET (download) requests.

Information About IP SLAs FTP Operations

FTP Operation

The FTP operation measures the round-trip time (RTT) between a Cisco device and an FTP server to retrieve a file. FTP is an application protocol, part of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/IP protocol stack, used for transferring files between network nodes.

In the figure below Router B is configured as the source IP SLAs device and an FTP operation is configured with the FTP server as the destination device.

Figure 1. FTP Operation

Connection response time is computed by measuring the time taken to download a file to Router B from the remote FTP server using FTP over TCP. This operation does not use the IP SLAs Responder.

Note

To test the response time to connect to an FTP port (Port 21), use the IP SLAs TCP Connect operation.

Both active and passive FTP transfer modes are supported. The passive mode is enabled by default. Only the FTP GET (download) operation type is supported. The URL specified for the FTP GET operation must be in one of the following formats:

ftp://username:password@host/filename

ftp://host/filename

If the username and password are not specified, the defaults are anonymous and test, respectively.

FTP carries a significant amount of data traffic and can affect the performance of your network. The results of an IP SLAs FTP operation to retrieve a large file can be used to determine the capacity of the network but retrieve large files with caution because the FTP operation will consume more bandwidth. The FTP operation also measures your FTP server performance levels by determining the RTT taken to retrieve a file.

Troubleshooting Tips

If the IP SLAs operation is not running and generating statistics, add the verify-data command to the configuration of the operation (while configuring in IP SLA configuration mode) to enable data verification. When enabled, each operation response is checked for corruption. Use the verify-data command with caution during normal operations because it generates unnecessary overhead.

Use the debugipslatrace and debugipslaerror commands to help troubleshoot issues with an IP SLAs operation.

What to Do Next

To add proactive threshold conditions and reactive triggering for generating traps, or for starting another operation, to an IP SLAs operation, see the "Configuring Proactive Threshold Monitoring" section.

To view and interpret the results of an IP SLAs operation use the showipslastatistics command. Checking the output for fields that correspond to criteria in your service level agreement will help you determine whether the service metrics are acceptable.

Configuration Examples for IP SLAs FTP Operations

Example Configuring an FTP Operation

The following example shows how to configure an FTP operation from Router B to the FTP server as shown in the "FTP Operation" figure in the "Information About IP SLAs FTP Operation" section. The operation is scheduled to start every day at 1:30 a.m. In this example, the file named test.cap is to be retrieved from the host, cisco.com, with a password of abc using FTP in active mode.

MIBs

RFCs

RFCs

Title

No new or modified RFCs are supported by this feature, and support for existing RFCs has not been modified by this feature.

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Technical Assistance

Description

Link

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Feature Information for IP SLAs FTP Operations

The following table provides release information about the feature or features described in this module. This table lists only the software release that introduced support for a given feature in a given software release train. Unless noted otherwise, subsequent releases of that software release train also support that feature.

Use Cisco Feature Navigator to find information about platform support and Cisco software image support. To access Cisco Feature Navigator, go to http://www.cisco.com/go/cfn. An account on Cisco.com is not required.

The Cisco IOS IP SLAs File Transfer Protocol (FTP) operation allows you to measure the network response time between a Cisco device and an FTP server to retrieve a file.

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Any Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and phone numbers used in this document are not intended to be actual addresses and phone numbers. Any examples, command display output, network topology diagrams, and other figures included in the document are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any use of actual IP addresses or phone numbers in illustrative content is unintentional and coincidental.